Adobe, Apple working together on Flash for iPhone - Page 2

The lack of flash isn't really high up in my 'list of problems'. To me he biggest problem with the iPhone is the lack of snycing. To dos? Push gmail? How come when I update an app on my iPhone it doesn't reflect that change on my computer!? How come I can't stream music to the nearest airport express?! How come when I add a bookmark to my iPhone safari it doesn't change my laptop's safari?! They can do so much stuff over the air that they aren't doing. I agree that media should be done over the wire, but how bout the other stuff?!

P.s. Apple can/should also do moe with the multitouch. Like multitouch swipe to change safari tabs! Or a two finger tap on the notifictations bar to turn wifi on/off.

My Bookmarks sync over the air, it is an option listed in the settings.

How about Adobe and Apple work together on Flash for OS X that doesn't suck arse, first? Then work their way up from there?

Because the iPhone is Apple's future.

If you look back over the past year or so, the biggest moves Apple has made are to secure the future of the iPhone, not the desktop.

They go head to head with IBM so that Papermaster can run their iPhone/devices business.
They bought PA Semi for their expertise in low power chips.
They are actually working with Adobe to get Flash onto the iPhone.
And I wonder if this big OSX cleanup is to make it smaller and leaner, so that it runs more efficiently on a small rectangular phone-type device.

And what has the desktop business seen? A non-removeable battery that uses the same tech that HP has been shipping since before Christmas.

But that's not to say that any improvements made for the iPhone business won't help the Mac business. The improvements Adobe make to Flash could make it more efficient for everyone (Windows, Mac and Linux users).

What good do we get from it? the only usefull content in flash is embedded video, but it is far outweighed by the crap - the banner ads. the top, side and bottom banners that throttle the fuck out of my CPU when all i want is to read 2KB text file.

I would like optional flash, that is, just display a grey box with a play button where flash content is, that way I don't have to wait on flash ads when i am in a hurry or in the Styx using EDGE.

You can't quantify how much I don't care -- Bob Kevoian of the Bob and Tom Show.

There's nothing annoying about the technology. It's the use some put to it that's annoying.

This argument comes out all the time. If you want a reductio ad absurdum, consider that open mail relays have likewise been defended until their public utility was eclipsed by the damage they caused.

Both Flash and open mail relays offer benefits to users in terms of functionality and convenience. For people who travel a lot and send mail from unpredictable locations, an open relay facilitates their tasks. But obviously, spammers took advantage of this technology and abused it until the general public decided that the inconvenience and added authentication overhead of closed mail relays outweighed any benefits of open ones.

Flash is similar (although not as inherently risky) in that it offers certain benefits to the browsing experience. But it also comes at a cost, which many people are now deciding outweighs the benefits. And even though it's just another 'technology', it can undeniably be abused, particularly if it means reduced battery life for portable devices that have to process it. Even on a desktop machine, I have personally seen my CPU load drop from over half available to under a tenth, simply by turning off Flash. I got zero benefit from Flash running in those instances (I did not have any video windows open - it was all ads) yet this one 'technology' was literally adding to my electric bill and slowing everything else down.

The internet community lost the convenience of open relays, but worked around it to the point that we generally don't notice. (There is still a network overhead and administrative burden associated with secured SMTP.) Has Flash reached a similar tipping point where people get so frustrated that they say it's just not worth it? Do we develop alternatives that render this problem moot? It seems like we're headed that way, and the only one oblivious to public sentiment is Adobe.

Despite what one poster wrote Apple is not giving up or ignoring the Mac.

I really don't care for Flash, but I would like to watch my streaming TV shows on my iPhone. I understand why Hulu et al. aren't revamping their site like YouTube did, but. Would think, for example, that making a dedicated Hulu app for the iPhone would generate a good deal of advertising revenue.

I find it funny that the general consensus when the iPhone fat arrived was that Apple was screwing the consumer by not including Flash, now it seems that the majority doesn't want it. Also, Im humoured by difficulty stated by Adobe, though a good part of that is surely the demands put on them by Apple.

Is it not possible for Adobe to make a Flash HW chip whose specific purpose is to deal with Flash sites?

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

• Is it not possible for Adobe to make a Flash HW chip whose specific purpose is to deal with Flash sites?

Adobe could make one, but Apple would then have to buy said chip, make extra space to fit it in the case and then worry about the extra power requirements needed. All for a chip whose sole purpose is support a proprietary media format which does not really benefit Apple in any way.

And once the adjustments outlined above have been made to the iPhone and once customers have become accustomed to the smooth flash experience, Apple would then be duty bound to pay Adobe tax for every device they make in the near future to get the special flash playback hardware.

So yes, Adobe could this chip and they may sell a few to other manufacturers, but it would highly unlikely way to get Flash on the iPhone.

Personally, I have all my Gmail forwarded to my MM account, which is set up on my iPhone. I changed testing SMTP to Gmail so I am esssentially getting Push email Gmail. It has worked out very well.

I did that last year for a few months after MM was launched b/c I thought Gmail wouldn't arrive as fast on my Touch when I'm at work. I often have to work away from my desk and it's convenient to check my email on my Touch. I just have to log onto the server at work and presto! I have access to the internet and email. But, MM just sucks. Sometimes people would send me email and I would never receive it. It would just go into the "cloud" and never come out, I guess. I use the iDisk storage every now and then, but if MM isn't vastly improved by my August renewal date....it will be a distant, bad memory. The feature I love about Gmail is the 7.8ish GB of storage space you have. You never have to delete anything. I tried to switch my usage to MM, but I ended up losing email b/c I accidentally deleted it and there is no way to get it back. Gmail spoiled me with their Archive feature. I can go back and find emails I sent in '06. It's great. After I switched back to Gmail (to my great relief) the email just sort of shows up on my Touch. I don't have to tell it to refresh. I don't know how it does that, but it works and it seems to be just as fast as the MM account. I just have two accounts on there for now. My Gmail email is even there when I wake up in the morning and check my email on my Touch at home. It's so much quicker than opening up my laptop and checking it there. I love my Apple, but I love my Google, too.

Adobe could make one, but Apple would then have to buy said chip, make extra space to fit it in the case and then worry about the extra power requirements needed. All for a chip whose sole purpose is support a proprietary media format which does not really benefit Apple in anyway. And once Apple includes the chip and customers become use to it, they have to pay Adobe tax for every device they make in the near future to have the special flash playback hardware.

So yes, Adobe could make one but it would be a highly unlikely to get flash on the iPhone.

Good point, I hadn't thought of that.

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

I guess the problem when building a platform is keeping it open and attractive to development (to build a strong eco-system and not having to do all the work, whilst at the same time avoiding leaving the door open for a third party to walk in and hijack a key ingredient.

Perhaps my opinion is not going to be extremely popular here, but I consider the iPhone browser as crippled without Flash capability. Flash is the de facto standard of the web when it comes to multimedia content, especially for live media viewing. I still find it rather ironic how, at iPhone's launch, Jobs criticized other phones for having "baby software" -- well, the other phones have caught up and surpassed Mobile Safari's capabilities. Apple has lost the edge - so what are they going to do about it?

Sure, Flash on the iPhone is going to need some radical optimizing, and probably not be quite as high-resolution as on a desktop or notebook. But the iPhone must have the capability to play most of the web's multimedia content to stay competitive. Simply deferring to YouTube links isn't the answer.

I did that last year for a few months after MM was launched b/c I thought Gmail wouldn't arrive as fast on my Touch when I'm at work. I often have to work away from my desk and it's convenient to check my email on my Touch. I just have to log onto the server at work and presto! I have access to the internet and email. But, MM just sucks. Sometimes people would send me email and I would never receive it. It would just go into the "cloud" and never come out, I guess. I use the iDisk storage every now and then, but if MM isn't vastly improved by my August renewal date....it will be a distant, bad memory. The feature I love about Gmail is the 7.8ish GB of storage space you have. You never have to delete anything. I tried to switch my usage to MM, but I ended up losing email b/c I accidentally deleted it and there is no way to get it back. Gmail spoiled me with their Archive feature. I can go back and find emails I sent in '06. It's great. After I switched back to Gmail (to my great relief) the email just sort of shows up on my Touch. I don't have to tell it to refresh. I don't know how it does that, but it works and it seems to be just as fast as the MM account. I just have two accounts on there for now. My Gmail email is even there when I wake up in the morning and check my email on my Touch at home. It's so much quicker than opening up my laptop and checking it there. I love my Apple, but I love my Google, too.

It doesn't sound like you had your Gmail auto forwarded to your MM account. I had initially set up both on my iPhone, and the Push was working by day 4. It is quite good. In fact, my Mac checks Gmail every 60 seconds, yet I'll hear/feel my iPhone vibrate first so I'll know to check OS X Mail. Remember, that is first being firerded from Gmail to MM a d then Pushed to my iPhone. If all that beats Mail's 60 second interval check to Gmail then I'd say it is working great.

I have had no issues with MM SMsibce day 4, and I think Apple learned the hardway just how big it has gotten as we have since seen a lit more staggered product releases since that fiasco last summer.

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

Perhaps my opinion is not going to be extremely popular here, but I consider the iPhone browser as crippled without Flash capability. Flash is the de facto standard of the web when it comes to multimedia content, especially for live media viewing. I still find it rather ironic how, at iPhone's launch, Jobs criticized other phones for having "baby software" -- well, the other phones have caught up and surpassed Mobile Safari's capabilities. Apple has lost the edge - so what are they going to do about it?

Sure, Flash on the iPhone is going to need some radical optimizing, and probably not be quite as high-resolution as on a desktop or notebook. But the iPhone must have the capability to play most of the web's multimedia content to stay competitive. Simply deferring to YouTube links isn't the answer.

Which other phones surpass mobile Safari?

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

I don't like to see Flash used as a substitute for normal website navigation. If turning it off ( as an option ) means I cannot navigate a website, then it becomes a barrier to the use of the internet on a broad range of devices.

Many of the most important software concepts were invented in the 70s and forgotten in the 80s.

... I really don't care for Flash, but I would like to watch my streaming TV shows on my iPhone. ...

I keep reading and hearing this sentiment over and over again, but it makes no sense to me.

Most North Americans using an iPhone have:

A hugely expensive data package that effectively doubles the price of using a phone from whatever they were using previously.

This huge increase in price gives us between 1 and 6 gigabytes of data depending on country and plan.

Streaming movies to a portable uses up gigabytes of data.

While walking around watching TV on your Phone sounds like a great idea, who would want to pay the equivalent of an extra cable bill to do so?

What's so great about live TV that you want to pay exorbitant data costs just to watch it? I watch a couple of news shows on the train every morning on my way to work. This "TV" is free, because it's a podcast that's automatically synced to my computer and thus the iPhone. It's about 12 hours old by the time I watch it the next morning, but why would I want to eat up my entire data contract for the month just to beat that 12 hour delay? And this is a news program, not just some dumb sitcom that it doesn't matter when you watch it.

I don't think people who are dreaming about live streaming to their iPhone are really thinking straight. I also think the number of people such services would serve (at least initially) would be tiny compared to the number of people who have an iPhone. In five years we will probably all be doing it because data will eventually revert to it's actual costs which are minimal, but now?

This just makes no sense.

In Windows, a window can be a document, it can be an application, or it can be a window that contains other documents or applications. Theres just no consistency. Its just a big grab bag of monkey...

I keep reading and hearing this sentiment over and over again, but it makes no sense to me.

Most North Americans using an iPhone have:

A hugely expensive data package that effectively doubles the price of using a phone from whatever they were using previously.

This huge increase in price gives us between 1 and 6 gigabytes of data depending on country and plan.

Streaming movies to a portable uses up gigabytes of data.

While walking around watching TV on your Phone sounds like a great idea, who would want to pay the equivalent of an extra cable bill to do so?

What's so great about live TV that you want to pay exorbitant data costs just to watch it? I watch a couple of news shows on the train every morning on my way to work. This "TV" is free, because it's a podcast that's automatically synced to my computer and thus the iPhone. It's about 12 hours old by the time I watch it the next morning, but why would I want to eat up my entire data contract for the month just to beat that 12 hour delay? And this is a news program, not just some dumb sitcom that it doesn't matter when you watch it.

I don't think people who are dreaming about live streaming to their iPhone are really thinking straight. I also think the number of people such services would serve (at least initially) would be tiny compared to the number of people who have an iPhone. In five years we will probably all be doing it because data will eventually revert to it's actual costs which are minimal, but now?

This just makes no sense.

My iPhone on AT&T I get unlimited data, though I think of is technically a 5GB soft cap. I also pay $60/month for the same data for an AT&T card for my Mac. I stream dozens of shows each week. This isn't like Sprint's TV service on their phones, these are shows that have already broadcast and have been put on Hulu and other sites as low-data streams wrapped in Flash. Hulu now offers 480p, the rest are 360p or lower, but the bittate is low enough and the codec seems to efficient enough to keep it down to a nominal size.

I'm always traveling so I rarely get to see a show when it aires, and I prefer to watch them in chronological order so these sites work for me. I even torrent the ones that aren't available as streams, but I try not to to this as I have to wait until it finishes to watch and it does take up a lot more data.

I do have my laptop but sometimes it is more convenient to just use my iPhone. It is also more conservative on power. For instance, I can sync video to my iPhone and then after 4 hours of viewing plug it back into my Mav and recharge the iPhone to continue viewing and surfing. This can be done many times in a day, but watching that dame video in my Mac or surfing the web would not get me the same duration. This message was sent from my iPhone.

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

I guess Jobs' statement of any usable version of Flash being too resource heavy, is a signal that the version of Flash they're developing is intended for the new (upcoming) iPhone, about which rumors have been going round about much more powerful graphics hardware...

Flash is CPU heavy, not GPU heavy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ipodrulz

I don't think speed becomes an issue when it's something as simple as comparing if apps are updated, or sending over 4 or even 20 To Dos. Apple could do a simple 10MB limit. Though the point of my post was to say that Flash is no where important compared to all the other things Apple could be working on.

I suspect that people would still complain.

Quote:

Originally Posted by arteckx

I could do without Flash for everyday use, but it's those random convenience type things that make it hurt. Need a restaurant menu so you can tell home what to pick up? Use the iPhone! Oh, wait, they decided to use flash for that. I guess I'd like one question mark blue cube with extra sauce because that's all I see on the menu.

I really don't see why those sites can't be done in AJAX if they need to be fancy. I would be curious if Flash Lite could handle those sites.

Quote:

Originally Posted by melgross

I don't think Jobs is trying to do that, and it would be stupid.

If Adobe's Flash fails because of this, which is almost impossible, then MS's Silverlight will take over.

I think that's a false dichotomy, it really depends on why Flash fails. If flash fails because iPhone doesn't have it, why would Silverlight succeed? I don't recall iPhone having Silverlight.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Virgil-TB2

I keep reading and hearing this sentiment over and over again, but it makes no sense to me.

(snip)

What's so great about *live* TV that you want to pay exorbitant data costs just to watch it?

(snip)

I don't think people who are dreaming about live streaming to their iPhone are really thinking straight. I also think the number of people such services would serve (at least initially) would be tiny compared to the number of people who have an iPhone. In five years we will probably all be doing it because data will eventually revert to it's actual costs which are minimal, but now?

(snip)

This just makes no sense.

Solipsism didn't say anything about streaming live TV, it looks like you are mentally inserting that term into his argument then flogging him for it, I think that's called a strawman argument. Solipsism's examples clearly weren't examples of live TV streaming.

My iPhone on AT&T I get unlimited data, though I think of is technically a 5GB soft cap. I also pay $60/month for the same data for an AT&T card for my Mac. I stream dozens of shows each week. This isn't like Sprint's TV service on their phones, these are shows that have already broadcast and have been put on Hulu and other sites as low-data streams wrapped in Flash. Hulu now offers 480p, the rest are 360p or lower, but the bittate is low enough and the codec seems to efficient enough to keep it down to a nominal size.

I'm always traveling so I rarely get to see a show when it aires, and I prefer to watch them in chronological order so these sites work for me. I even torrent the ones that aren't available as streams, but I try not to to this as I have to wait until it finishes to watch and it does take up a lot more data.

I do have my laptop but sometimes it is more convenient to just use my iPhone. It is also more conservative on power. For instance, I can sync video to my iPhone and then after 4 hours of viewing plug it back into my Mav and recharge the iPhone to continue viewing and surfing. This can be done many times in a day, but watching that dame video in my Mac or surfing the web would not get me the same duration. This message was sent from my iPhone.

Well, your data package and the amount you pay for it are just as I said, so at least we agree on that.

Of course, I wasn't taking into account the compression so I was thinking a few movies would blow your entire data for the month. Still, movies are heavily compressed when bought from iTunes as well and they are hundreds of megabytes each.

I'd be interested to know how many movies on average (in hours) you can watch and how close to the 5 GB package you have it gets each month.

The amount of data streaming around the net if everyone did this is kind of staggering. Imagine if everyone on 15 million iPhones is watching the same show at once. It also seems clear to me that if the shows aren't live then streaming is not necessarily the best way to go, because iTunes syncing would give you essentially the same result without touching the bandwidth, but a company can't exactly dictate to users how they watch their shows and stay in business for long.

All in all very interesting, and perhaps not too prohibitive data wise, but unless the compression is quite overdone, I would still think that you are in danger of dancing too close to your limit with that volume of file transfers.

Certainly, if this becomes widely used/possible there will be countless fools who end up paying hundreds of dollars in extra data fees because they couldn't help themselves from watching a hockey game on the iPhone or some such. Just as when the iPhone first came out there were a bunch of idiots that ended up paying thousands of bucks for unsupported tethering.

In Windows, a window can be a document, it can be an application, or it can be a window that contains other documents or applications. Theres just no consistency. Its just a big grab bag of monkey...

Prior to installing, I had around 100 open windows/tabs, and the CPU load was 123% (out of 200 on a dual-core iMac). I closed Safari, installed clicktoflash, and reopened the same windows. With Flash turned off: 16%.

Unless Adobe fixes this serious performance problem I'd just as soon see Flash go the way of Stuffit files.

I also have installed ClickToFlash. What I noticed to date, I found that I didn't or wouldn't have missed the ads if Flash was enabled in the first place.

Well, your data package and the amount you pay for it are just as I said, so at least we agree on that.

I'm not sure what part you are referring too. If it is the $60/month for my 3G PC card, that is the standard US price for unlimited 3G Internet. It doesn't matter how little or how much I use it's always $60 a month. Some months I'm out of the country so I don't use it all, while other months I download dozens of GB. For instance, January I grabbed a lot of new TV shows, actually bought music from iTS for the first time streamed TV Shows from Hulu, Daily Show, Colbert AND Dled Windows 7 Beta, which is 3.7GB.

Quote:

Of course, I wasn't taking into account the compression so I was thinking a few movies would blow your entire data for the month. Still, movies are heavily compressed when bought from iTunes as well and they are hundreds of megabytes each.

These aren't movies, they are TV shows running about 21 or 42 minutes each, sans the added commercials. They are heavily compressed. The quality is more in line with YouTube, not iTunes.

Quote:

I'd be interested to know how many movies on average (in hours) you can watch and how close to the 5 GB package you have it gets each month.

It is unlimited for AT&T. They stipulate a 5GB softcap, but I've fad exceeded if and gave never been crippled.

Quote:

The amount of data streaming around the net if everyone did this is kind of staggering. Imagine if everyone on 15 million iPhones is watching the same show at once. It also seems clear to me that if the shows aren't live then streaming is not necessarily the best way to go, because iTunes syncing would give you essentially the same result without touching the bandwidth, but a company can't exactly dictate to users how they watch their shows and stay in business for long.

That could have already happened and could be the cause of AT&T and Apple's legal woes. Remember that the iPhone can already do YouTube and that there are plenty of TV Shows on it. Including the official, free release of the Monty Python collection on YouTube.

Quote:

All in all very interesting, and perhaps not too prohibitive data wise, but unless the compression is quite overdone, I would still think that you are in danger of dancing too close to your limit with that volume of file transfers.

Again, no real danger. No possible overage fees. The most they could do is thriottle my bandwidth or cancel my account, but I have 2 iPhone along with my data card so I don't think that will happen.

Quote:

Certainly, if this becomes widely used/possible there will be countless fools who end up paying hundreds of dollars in extra data fees because they couldn't help themselves from watching a hockey game on the iPhone or some such. Just as when the iPhone first came out there were a bunch of idiots that ended up paying thousands of bucks for unsupported tethering.

Not on AT&T under there current setup.

PS: I'm stick using my iPhone as my only internwt capabble
Machine foe the next two weeks, so please forgive any errors as I'm not going to fix them. Scolling in a text window in mobile Safari is extremely slow.

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

Prior to installing, I had around 100 open windows/tabs, and the CPU load was 123% (out of 200 on a dual-core iMac). I closed Safari, installed clicktoflash, and reopened the same windows. With Flash turned off: 16%.

I fail to see how it proves anything at all??? Yes, doing something consumes more power than doing something. You can even do better : if you don't launch Safari at all, the CPU load will even be lower!

The test would have been meaningful if you had launched your 100 tabs with AJAX applications providing the exact same features and services the flash were doing. When I compare an AJAX application and one written in Flex, all I can see is that the Flex version does more, in a more user friendly way and often with the same amount of resources or less.
Not to mention that the actual code of the AJAX application is often a nightmare to understand and maintain, while it is quite easy to have a very clean Flex application.

fuck flash
What good do we get from it? the only usefull content in flash is embedded video, but it is far outweighed by the crap - the banner ads. the top, side and bottom banners that throttle the fuck out of my CPU when all i want is to read 2KB text file.

I haven't seen any banner for ages, that's what Adblock is for. Ads are bad anyway, whether they are in Flash, animated GIF or plain text.

And if you think Flash is meant for embedded video, you are really missing most of what Flash is about... What good do we get from Flash? Well, we get rich applications our of Flex... We get web applications that feel like desktop applications. The whole benefits of distributed online applications with almost none of the drawbacks. And using Flex, we get that in a way that is productive, maintainable and user friendly. The AJAX alternative looks like a Frankenstein creature next to it. Silverlight is too young and too locked.

There is a whole world outside of North America. And most of us have much better 3G than on AT&T.

Quote:

While walking around watching TV on your Phone sounds like a great idea, who would want to pay the equivalent of an extra cable bill to do so?

Because the extra is very small. Actually, it's better for the operator if you watch live TV through them rather than through a third party solution. Why? Because they are the provider - they have no peering cost and they can insert ads...

For the past three years, I could watch live TV on my HTC phone. The option was worth 6 per month. Then, that option was included along with "unlimited" Internet.
Now that I have an iPhone, I actually lost features. No MMS, no TV... You know the funny part? My iPhone subscription actually included unlimited live TV. If I put my iPhone SIM card in my old HTC phone, I can actually watch TV 24/24 with no extra cost. I just can't do it on my iPhone because it won't let me. Even better : my operator (Orange) released a free application to watch TV for iPhones on its own network. The application was refused by Apple on the AppStore... Just great...

Quote:

I don't think people who are dreaming about live streaming to their iPhone are really thinking straight. I also think the number of people such services would serve (at least initially) would be tiny compared to the number of people who have an iPhone.

Yes, that number would be tiny, because it is a real deal breaker in some countries. Such as Japan - a phone that cannot be used to watch TV is just worthless.
That's the main problem : when you buy an iPhone, you're paying 200 for a phone when the 1 phone next to it will let you watch live TV, send MMS... When people buy a phone by comparing the feature charts, the iPhone is left behind.

I fail to see how it proves anything at all??? Yes, doing something consumes more power than doing something. You can even do better : if you don't launch Safari at all, the CPU load will even be lower!

The test would have been meaningful if you had launched your 100 tabs with AJAX applications providing the exact same features and services the flash were doing.

I don't dispute your logic (although Flash has proven to be more CPU-hungry in OS X than in Windows, so Adobe needs to clean up its act regardless), but these were not 100 tabs of video or anything that otherwise warranted Flash functionality. The only content I was interested in was text - everything else was unnecessary. So in my case, there was a huge cost for having Flash embedded in those tabs, and no benefit whatsoever.

I'm very grateful now that I can turn it off. If advertisers want to reach my eyeballs, they'll have to do it in a less CPU-intrusive manner, or get blocked altogether. I'm tired of sacrificing my user experience to their (and Adobe's) resource-hogging extravagance.

If Adobe's Flash fails because of this, which is almost impossible, then MS's Silverlight will take over.

How many people would want to see that happen? Raise your hands.

Hmmm! I didn't think so.

No matter how many people hate Adobe, it would be better if they succeed than MS. We know what their vision is.

Why? If you feel that way then I recommend you stop computing. There's a high likelihood that some site you like is running ASP or has some MS technology somewhere. Silverlight and WPFe are actually very cool technology and in many ways superior to Flash. Not only that, Moonlight is an open source implementation under Mono. Heck the DLR and Silverlight 2.0 controls have been released as MS-PL.

Silverlight 3 will even support H.264 video and AAC.

And frankly it was MS that enabled Ajax by adding XMLHttpRequest in 1999 to IE5. So you should stop using any ajax enabled site at all. No google maps, no Facebook, etc.

I for one want Silverlight to be successful because for too long Adobe/Macromedia has been a complete ass about the Flash monopoly. IMHO the only reason that SWF has become an open standard again and Adobe has made some stabs at opening up Flash is because of Silverlight.

That's short-sighted, ads do help support the content that you're using.

Written like somebody working for a commercial website.

Quote:

The problem I might have with ads is the intrusive ones. A still image or plain text is fine.

Agreed. I never had a problem with any ads in newspapers or magazines. In fact, I enjoy a well-designed clipping-worthy ad with witty copy and/or a beautiful photograph.

Unfortunately, Flash is necessary for a growing number of websites. Just a few days ago, I read a column in an online newspaper decrying how virtually all restaurants are suckered by web developers into buying fancy Flash-only, animation-heavy websites. It's a great revenue stream for the developers, especially with the hefty annual maintenance fees, but it's a nightmare to keep updated and won't work on any mobile browsers to date.

This argument comes out all the time. If you want a reductio ad absurdum, consider that open mail relays have likewise been defended until their public utility was eclipsed by the damage they caused.

Both Flash and open mail relays offer benefits to users in terms of functionality and convenience. For people who travel a lot and send mail from unpredictable locations, an open relay facilitates their tasks. But obviously, spammers took advantage of this technology and abused it until the general public decided that the inconvenience and added authentication overhead of closed mail relays outweighed any benefits of open ones.

Flash is similar (although not as inherently risky) in that it offers certain benefits to the browsing experience. But it also comes at a cost, which many people are now deciding outweighs the benefits. And even though it's just another 'technology', it can undeniably be abused, particularly if it means reduced battery life for portable devices that have to process it. Even on a desktop machine, I have personally seen my CPU load drop from over half available to under a tenth, simply by turning off Flash. I got zero benefit from Flash running in those instances (I did not have any video windows open - it was all ads) yet this one 'technology' was literally adding to my electric bill and slowing everything else down.

The internet community lost the convenience of open relays, but worked around it to the point that we generally don't notice. (There is still a network overhead and administrative burden associated with secured SMTP.) Has Flash reached a similar tipping point where people get so frustrated that they say it's just not worth it? Do we develop alternatives that render this problem moot? It seems like we're headed that way, and the only one oblivious to public sentiment is Adobe.

See also: RealNetworks, public feelings toward

Your argument is only true for those who agree with it. It's not the universal truth you're trying to make it out to be.

I see you've pointedly ignored the rest of my argument.

I believe the same thing it true of MMS and other old technologies that crowd the networks, but I'm not going to to get too upset about it, though I think their time is passing.

As long as people can choose to do without something like this, I see no reason why it shouldn't be included, as there's no really good alternative as yet for some of the things it does, and there are even worse alternatives.

If the use for this was only for the purpose of showing video over the net, then I would agree, but that's not the case. I've seen some very good graphical uses that would be difficult to do otherwise.

Despite what one poster wrote Apple is not giving up or ignoring the Mac.

I really don't care for Flash, but I would like to watch my streaming TV shows on my iPhone. I understand why Hulu et al. aren't revamping their site like YouTube did, but. Would think, for example, that making a dedicated Hulu app for the iPhone would generate a good deal of advertising revenue.

I find it funny that the general consensus when the iPhone fat arrived was that Apple was screwing the consumer by not including Flash, now it seems that the majority doesn't want it. Also, Im humoured by difficulty stated by Adobe, though a good part of that is surely the demands put on them by Apple.

Is it not possible for Adobe to make a Flash HW chip whose specific purpose is to deal with Flash sites?

Don't ever make the mistake to think that because there are a few loud individuals on forums, that they constitute the majority. That's very unlikely.

I think that's a false dichotomy, it really depends on why Flash fails. If flash fails because iPhone doesn't have it, why would Silverlight succeed? I don't recall iPhone having Silverlight.

I'm going by the logic of people here. They think that if Flash fails on the iPhone, it will fail everywhere else. Fail on the iPhone, fail on every other mobile device, then fail on laptops, then desktops. I don't sgree with that at all, but MS is pushing Silverlight heavily. As one piece of software moves out of the market, another one moves in.

There is too much to like about these types of software amongst the advertizers, web sites, animation designers, and others, to allow it to die, even though a few seems to be hysterical about it.

MS can afford to do what no other company can, and that is to wait until the conpetition is down. If Flash is seen to be dying, very unlikely as I've said, but let's say it is, then MS will do what it always does against a weaker competitor, they will give Silverlight away for free to every developer around. It will take over. We then may not see it on the iPhone, but it will still be everywhere else, and we will be going through these same arguments except with the name "Silverlight" implanted, instead of "Flash".

Why? If you feel that way then I recommend you stop computing. There's a high likelihood that some site you like is running ASP or has some MS technology somewhere. Silverlight and WPFe are actually very cool technology and in many ways superior to Flash. Not only that, Moonlight is an open source implementation under Mono. Heck the DLR and Silverlight 2.0 controls have been released as MS-PL.

Silverlight 3 will even support H.264 video and AAC.

And frankly it was MS that enabled Ajax by adding XMLHttpRequest in 1999 to IE5. So you should stop using any ajax enabled site at all. No google maps, no Facebook, etc.

I for one want Silverlight to be successful because for too long Adobe/Macromedia has been a complete ass about the Flash monopoly. IMHO the only reason that SWF has become an open standard again and Adobe has made some stabs at opening up Flash is because of Silverlight.

Your post, IMO. is correct in everything you are saying but you're dealing with too many people here that HATE anything non Apple.

By the way thanks, I didn't know MS enabled Ajax with the addition of XMLHttpRequest.

Adobes Flash, used to view online video and animation, is installed on 98 percent of the worlds personal computers. While the software is on more than 800 million handsets, it isnt available on the iPhone. Apple CEO Steve Jobs said last March that Flash runs too slowly for the iPhone, and a slimmed-down version, called Flash Lite, isnt capable enough to be used with the Web.

Just because it runs lousy on a Mac doesn't make it bad technology. Maybe Apple should get off there Ass and make Safari a little more stable and get inline with the rest of the Browsers and OS's because Flash isn't going away anytime soon.

I really don't see why those sites can't be done in AJAX if they need to be fancy. I would be curious if Flash Lite could handle those sites.

There are a couple of reasons why Flash is a more attractive target platform than AJAX:

Guaranteed feature support across all browsers and platforms. With AJAX you have to hunt down the smallest common dominator the JavaScript, CSS and SVG implementations support for each browser.

Even if browsers support the same features on paper the different implementations have different bugs (no bug-for-bug compatibility). Even browsers using the same web engines can differ in bugs due to different versions used (a common complaint about WebKit which does not have official and stable releases).

New flash versions have a very high adoption rate compaired to new browsers (e.g. IE6 is still used in many places).

Well, your data package and the amount you pay for it are just as I said, so at least we agree on that.

Of course, I wasn't taking into account the compression so I was thinking a few movies would blow your entire data for the month. Still, movies are heavily compressed when bought from iTunes as well and they are hundreds of megabytes each.

I'd be interested to know how many movies on average (in hours) you can watch and how close to the 5 GB package you have it gets each month.

The amount of data streaming around the net if everyone did this is kind of staggering. Imagine if everyone on 15 million iPhones is watching the same show at once. It also seems clear to me that if the shows aren't live then streaming is not necessarily the best way to go, because iTunes syncing would give you essentially the same result without touching the bandwidth, but a company can't exactly dictate to users how they watch their shows and stay in business for long.

All in all very interesting, and perhaps not too prohibitive data wise, but unless the compression is quite overdone, I would still think that you are in danger of dancing too close to your limit with that volume of file transfers.

Certainly, if this becomes widely used/possible there will be countless fools who end up paying hundreds of dollars in extra data fees because they couldn't help themselves from watching a hockey game on the iPhone or some such. Just as when the iPhone first came out there were a bunch of idiots that ended up paying thousands of bucks for unsupported tethering.

A lot of movies and other videos are beginning to be formatted for the iPhone, and other small mobile devices. As such, they only have a resolution of 480x 320. That's not much data at all when compared to a full SD file. I'm seeing "For the iPhone on more sites as time goes by. As these devices get even more popular, much content will come out that way.

As time goes on, and bandwidth becomes greater, this will become less of a problem anyway, and the higher resolutions will not be a problem.

When we discuss this sort of thing, I really think that we have to look further into the future to see if out argument will work. We can look at any number of technologies that people said wouldn't work when they first came out. Quicktime was one of the more famous.

Right now, there still aren't that many people doing this. In five years, when there will be, networks should catch up.

It's interesting to note that in the late '90's when companies were building out their networks, the tech crash of the early 2000's caused a lot of that fiber to go "dark", not get used. It was considered to be such a big mistake to have built it in the first place. but now, that dark fiber is being used, and much more is being installed.

I'm not worried, the networks will gain the needed capacity out of necessity, as always.

Their are a lot of things that are annoying in life, so that's a diatribe that can go on forever.

Speaking specifically to flash. Yes I acknowledged that the abuse of flash isn't necessarily the fault of the technology itslef. But to the end user that is a distinction with little difference when you are being inundated with flash's annoyances.

Quote:

Originally Posted by melgross

There's nothing annoying about the technology. It's the use some put to it that's annoying.

Cell phones are also an annoying technology, and should be stopped, by that reasoning. I find people talking on the phone very annoying when they do it on line, in a doctors office, in the train. I find the stupid ringtones so many people use annoying, as loud as possible, of course. I find other things about them annoying. Most people would agree with me on this.